Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Want an unfair advantage in your tech career? Consume content for other roles

matthewgrohman.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 259 posts

Re: Want an unfair advantage in your tech career? Consume content for other roles

#71

Post by ianbutler »

AstixAndBelix wrote: post #65
jrochkind1 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious, would you say any of your motivation and feeling of reward in your job comes from doing a good job, or helping your organization achieve it's goals? Or does your motivation and reward (what gets you out of bed, what makes your job tolerable or enjoyable) come mostly/only from maximizing your paycheck? Or other things?

Why would I help my organizatiom reach its goals of the organization is not interested in helping me achieve mine ?

Thats part of what you're paid for obviously. Aside from that your success in the org is tied to its success to some degree.

I understand your mentality from low wage workers but I dont understand it from people in software who clear anywhere from 100k to 700k a year.

Apart from that, doing a good job is a character thing. You should do a good job for yourself, not try to fit in with the slugs.

Re: Want an unfair advantage in your tech career? Consume content for other roles

#72

Post by shireboy »

Absolutely. As a developer (in an English speaking country) I tell people my job is to translate from English into Nerd. I sometimes further qualify that as "translate from into nerd". Some of this has been codified into things like Domain Driven Design, but to me is just part of being a good developer: listen and understand the business, communicate well, and solve people's problems with code if you have to.

Re: Want an unfair advantage in your tech career? Consume content for other roles

#73

Post by 123pie123 »

SassyGrapefruit wrote: post #30

I travelled to Yellowstone National Park. I wandered into the back country office and spoke with the ranger. She was super friendly and informative. One interesting fact she shared is that Yellowstone is almost 4,000 sq. miles and receives 5 million visitors a year. 99.9% of those visitors never travel more than 50 feet from the main road. This means that most of those visitors experience less than 1/10th of 1% of th…

back in the day when I was first starting out I had to do the odd audit (eg listing network ports or checking computer inventory numbers in offices - v boring)

one of the best things I did (which was dependant on how much spare time I had), was to ask the people I visited, what do you do? I tried to make sure I asked a mixture of low to high ranking people

The responses was amazing, with some people giving up loads of their time up to explain their jobs. I even made some good friends ouside the computer dept

Re: Want an unfair advantage in your tech career? Consume content for other roles

#74

Post by have_faith »

JohnFen wrote: post #15

I don't "consume content". I read, watch, and listen to a wide variety of things, though, and highly recommend that practice. My apologies. "Consume content" has become a pet peeve of mine. It's a dehumanizing and overly reductionist phrase, and isn't even technically correct (the best kind of correct).

I also have a natural aversion to this phrase for some reason. "Content" to me evokes endless clickbait, YouTube video review spam, listicles, submarine articles, etc. When I see someone comment on something along the lines of "this is great content"-what I really hear is "this is recognisable as high-effort / professionally produced in a marketing context", it says nothing to the substance of the thing, what novel ideas it contributes, and so on. I also recognise that this is a very reductive way of looking at the world so I don't take it too seriously.

Re: Want an unfair advantage in your tech career? Consume content for other roles

#75

Post by orangepurple »

inanutshellus wrote: post #68
orangepurple wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a visceral reaction when I see people referred to as consumers. It's rude and distasteful beyond belief on par with calling them biomass waste producers, useful drones, useless eaters, or some sort of contagion. How about, in most cases, you know, CUSTOMERS? Or in this case listeners.

I understand but don't agree. 'customer' implies commerce happened, 'listener' implies listening happened. 'consumer' is a higher abstraction than either of those. It's the most abstract word someone could think of to say "X internalized Y". e.g. "X took Y and added it to itself... let's not get distracted with how. the important thing is, X took Y and internalized it." I guess we could, uh, go with "internalizer". I…

Perhaps beneficiary but that may be a bridge too far

Re: Want an unfair advantage in your tech career? Consume content for other roles

#76

Post by vinayan3 »

SassyGrapefruit wrote: post #30

I travelled to Yellowstone National Park. I wandered into the back country office and spoke with the ranger. She was super friendly and informative. One interesting fact she shared is that Yellowstone is almost 4,000 sq. miles and receives 5 million visitors a year. 99.9% of those visitors never travel more than 50 feet from the main road. This means that most of those visitors experience less than 1/10th of 1% of th…

> 99.9% of those visitors never travel more than 50 feet from the main road. This means that most of those visitors experience less than 1/10th of 1% of the actual park.

I'd say that's a win. We should be preserving as much as we can which really means most of us shouldn't be exploring more of the park which is mostly off trail.

I do get your point that people are coming to Yosemite and are not even taking advantage of the trails.

One point that should be made from this is that many people who are coming to the park don't really have the fitness, skills, and motivation to explore more of the trails in the park. Similarly, many people really aren't going to go explore at their companies because of skills, motivation, and time. Time is a major blocker for me because I can do more in areas outside of my focus but there are other life obligations and the need to rest to avoid burnout.

Re: Want an unfair advantage in your tech career? Consume content for other roles

#77

Post by throwaway280382 »

JohnFen wrote: post #15

I don't "consume content". I read, watch, and listen to a wide variety of things, though, and highly recommend that practice. My apologies. "Consume content" has become a pet peeve of mine. It's a dehumanizing and overly reductionist phrase, and isn't even technically correct (the best kind of correct).

"Read/Watch/Listen" are what you think you are doing. "Consume" is what the people who want to make money from you think (Entrepreneurs, Media executives, bloggers etc).

Re: Want an unfair advantage in your tech career? Consume content for other roles

#78

Post by JohnFen »

inanutshellus wrote: post #68
orangepurple wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a visceral reaction when I see people referred to as consumers. It's rude and distasteful beyond belief on par with calling them biomass waste producers, useful drones, useless eaters, or some sort of contagion. How about, in most cases, you know, CUSTOMERS? Or in this case listeners.

I understand but don't agree. 'customer' implies commerce happened, 'listener' implies listening happened. 'consumer' is a higher abstraction than either of those. It's the most abstract word someone could think of to say "X internalized Y". e.g. "X took Y and added it to itself... let's not get distracted with how. the important thing is, X took Y and internalized it." I guess we could, uh, go with "internalizer". I…

> 'consumer' is a higher abstraction than either of those

In the old days, we called those people the "audience".

What your audience hopefully does with your work is "learn" or "be entertained".

Re: Want an unfair advantage in your tech career? Consume content for other roles

#79

Post by jrochkind1 »

AstixAndBelix wrote: post #65
jrochkind1 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious, would you say any of your motivation and feeling of reward in your job comes from doing a good job, or helping your organization achieve it's goals? Or does your motivation and reward (what gets you out of bed, what makes your job tolerable or enjoyable) come mostly/only from maximizing your paycheck? Or other things?

Why would I help my organizatiom reach its goals of the organization is not interested in helping me achieve mine ?

Hm, I'm not sure how that answered my question? Although I see you are not the GP poster, I'm interested in your answer too, sure.

I figure people are motivated by different factors at work, in different proportions.

I could guess what you meant by that sentence, but I might get it wrong, and then where would we be.

But ok, are you meaning that sentance to suggest that what gets you going in the morning, what makes your job tolerable or pleasurable to you, is exclusively maximizing your income, and that you think this is the way everyone should be, because... uh... I'm still not sure how to relate that to your sentence/question/rhetorical question, honestly. Like, if your organization is interested in helping you achieve your goals, then are you motivated by something other than maximizing your income? Or still just by maximizing your income, either way? Are you telling us that your goals at a job consist of maximizing your income, and that's it? And this is true either way, regardless of whether the organization is interested in helping you achieve that?

Re: Want an unfair advantage in your tech career? Consume content for other roles

#80

Post by inanutshellus »

JohnFen wrote: post #36
inanutshellus wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will grant you that "consume" is awkward. I often say "I read -- well -- I listened to [The Sandlot]" and "consume" is too awkward to use colloquially as "I consumed [The Sandlot]". That said... Unless you've got an overtly superior alternative, time to move on and join the fray. It's simply a concise way to say "read / watched / listened" when context of which media doesn't matter.

> It's simply a concise way to say "read / watched / listened" when context of which media doesn't matter. It's barely tolerable when used in that sense, but typically it's not used in that sense. The problem is the widespread abuse of the term. When I first started hearing it used, it was weird but didn't irritate me because it was usually used in the sense you're saying here. But then it started being used all over…

You're letting something irritate you that's not wrong.

It's like getting mad when someone says "I had noodles for lunch" when you know perfectly well they had /spaghetti/, and if they'd said /spaghetti/ you could get irate because they actually had /ragu/ spaghetti (meat in the spaghetti sauce).

Using the abstract word it still "fine" if that's the level the speaker wants to give.

Post reply on HN